Backers v CIG/RSI

[dsmart]

The day they knew that it wasn't possible to get the technology to work, but instead decided to pretend they could rather than being honest and downsizing their ambitions, was the day it became a scam. That's why Derek's first blog about how it couldn't be made as originally promised angered Chris Roberts so much: it's because Chris knew Derek was right.

Yup. Then they gave the one guy who didn't need/want a refund - a refund

[dsmart]

The only thing that is stopping the whole house of cards from tumbling down at this point is the fact that CIG haven't had to, yet, open up the books. The moment the backers are produced that smoking gun - the CIG finances - then the majority will accept the project is doomed

Yes. That's why CIG freaked out when Crytek filed their discovery motion.

and will want to try recoup whatever cash is left.

They won't get ANY money. CIG already sent out that message loud and clear with this recent $4,500 lawsuit fiasco.

[Penny579]

To a guy is like who has MS, his argument is they have gone so far from the original pitch he physically cannot play or enjoy the game cig are now promising to develop.  all he wanted was 20 mission with drop-in co-op play so his friends could carry him through the game for 4.5k.  So glad Chirs was here to save PC gaming show the industry how great a developer could be!

I am not from the US, your legal system amazes me a little, but I have read from multiple sources online that this drastic revision of the terms and conditions is perfectly legal.   Are the ToS considered a contract?  how on earth is it all reasonable to completely re-write the terms, without providing some consideration?

Take the finical accountability, Chris made multiple representations about the money raised going to the game and being accountable for it if he did not deliver, this key point induced many people to back the game, it was also in the ToS. Imagine you backed 10k based on this fact.  You log into to see how progress is going and you forced to click a checkbox, in which the contract is re-written stripping the key rights to accountability, and in return, you get the privilege of maintaining the access to a broken, unfinished product you already had?  not only is there no consideration it's deceptive, misleading and unconscionable.   It reminds me of the south park episode where Apple put in there ToS that they could force you into a human centipeade.

Still i think people have to accept they kickstarted a product and it failed miserably.  Just because other people are dumb enough to ignore this and keep pouring funding into it doesn't change that fact, it just rubs salt in the wounds they still have enough money to keep failing, after all, they also paid so are entitled to long depressing wait watching

[dsmart]

To a guy is like who has MS, his argument is they have gone so far from the original pitch he physically cannot play or enjoy the game cig are now promising to develop.  all he wanted was 20 mission with drop-in co-op play so his friends could carry him through the game for 4.5k.  So glad Chirs was here to save PC gaming show the industry how great a developer could be!

I have deliberately refrained from talking about his illness because it's not even relevant to his refund. You could die tomorrow, and still NOT be entitled to a refund. Point is, that excuse is pure BS. If you have MS, you can play very few games. And a flight sim, fps or similar games which rely on twitch reaction, aren't going to be one of them. CIG hasn't changed the focus of the game to any extent whereby all of a sudden it was OK for a person with MS in 2013, but not in 2018. So I don't believe his bs. I think he's just using his illness as an excuse to garner sympathy and stoke the outrage culture we're currently enduring.

[David-2]

Seems like CIG could have avoided a lot of trouble by merely saying, from the beginning, that the maximum refund ever under any circumstances was $60 (the typical price of a top-notch new release PC game) and that all your other "pledges" (pre-purchases, donations, whatever) went directly to the development cost of the BDSSE (or whatever it was at any given time) and though you'd be allocated special ships or whatever as a result of your "pledge" none of it would be refundable ever.

Personally I feel that anybody at all at any time whatsoever who put in more than $120 (the price of a top-notch PC game plus its first expansion pack) was a fool, and, therefore, was separated from his money in the usual way.

[Penny579]

$1000 on game is kind of shocking, but if you love it and are getting value from it what ever fine.

$1000 on game that is not even released, being developed by what appears to be a very incompetent / shady developer .... begs the question where has the sanity gone.

[jwh1701]

$1000 on game is kind of shocking, but if you love it and are getting value from it what ever fine.

$1000 on game that is not even released, being developed by what appears to be a very incompetent / shady developer .... begs the question where has the sanity gone.

I play defiance still and we have a person who has spent over 30k on loot boxes and he has even showed us the screen shots.

[Penny579]

I have deliberately refrained from talking about his illness because it's not even relevant to his refund. You could die tomorrow, and still NOT be entitled to a refund. Point is, that excuse is pure BS. If you have MS, you can play very few games. And a flight sim, fps or similar games which rely on twitch reaction, aren't going to be one of them. CIG hasn't changed the focus of the game to any extent whereby all of a sudden it was OK for a person with MS in 2013, but not in 2018. So I don't believe his bs. I think he's just using his illness as an excuse to garner sympathy and stoke the outrage culture we're currently enduring.

I understand the reluctance to bring up anyone's personal issues. However i think we can make an exception as he has been open about his condition and it is relevant in this case. His reason for backing star citizen revolved around being able to enjoy single player styled adventure, where the co-op would allow him to be carried through the game as he would struggle and not enjoy doing this by himself with his condition.  CIG have since dropped the singleplayer campaign with co-op.  He was presold X, X is no longer going to be made, he wants a refund.

You can not pre-sell a car, turn around after a half a decade say you have not finished the car because you are now making a boat and also cry foul because your land locked customers who never wanted a boat are trying to get there money back.   

I know it's not clear cut like this as I think he continued backing the game after CIG indicated this feature was going to be dropped. In his defence, CIG also do a terrible job of announcing and feature downgrades.

on the same principle, I think early backers who wanted wing commander 2014 also have every right to ask for a refund.  The vertical slice did not show glorious space battles vs cats and ship customisation. More than half of it was terrible fps, stealth gameplay and puzzels solving all of which had nothing to do with wing commander.  They paid for wing commanders successor not theif in space.

bottom line is dont spent 4.5k on a jpeg unless its master works you want to hang above the dining room table.
 

[helimoth]

As an old Monster Hunter fan, I logged in to check Defiance out. Not really my thing to play solo but with a group of friends I can see where the fun is. Difference between SC and Defiance though is Defiance has an existing game loop where you can do things and actually play and it and most importantly people are enjoying it. You can recommend it to your friends and they might not like the game but they aren't going to be mad you recommended to badass game to play together. Recommended SC to your friends? There's a good chance they will be very annoyed at you for suggesting they buy it.

I guess it's similar to the age old solution of knowing if a girl/guy is really "the one" by whether you would introduce them to your parents. The same is true before something can be classed as a proper game; would you introduce the game to your friends and encourage them to buy it?

[StanTheMan]

As an old Monster Hunter fan, I logged in to check Defiance out. Not really my thing to play solo but with a group of friends I can see where the fun is. Difference between SC and Defiance though is Defiance has an existing game loop where you can do things and actually play and it and most importantly people are enjoying it. You can recommend it to your friends and they might not like the game but they aren't going to be mad you recommended to badass game to play together. Recommended SC to your friends? There's a good chance they will be very annoyed at you for suggesting they buy it.

I guess it's similar to the age old solution of knowing if a girl/guy is really "the one" by whether you would introduce them to your parents. The same is true before something can be classed as a proper game; would you introduce the game to your friends and encourage them to buy it?

It is something you learn in life.  To be careful what you recommend to people (especially friends or minors).

Shit load of people recommended SC and there will be fallout from it.

[Backer42]

Personally I feel that anybody at all at any time whatsoever who put in more than $120 (the price of a top-notch PC game plus its first expansion pack) was a fool, and, therefore, was separated from his money in the usual way.

You know that Kickstarters, which have $120 as the highest tier, don't raise enough money to develop a AAA video game. So without those "fools", the whole concept doesn't work at all.

Same is true for "freemium" games: They couldn't be developed without whales spending 10k on them.

[dsmart]

You know that Kickstarters, which have $120 as the highest tier, don't raise enough money to develop a AAA video game. So without those "fools", the whole concept doesn't work at all.

Same is true for "freemium" games: They couldn't be developed without whales spending 10k on them.

Well they asked for $2M and got $6M. The tiers went up to $10K (1 backer). This whole bs started when they began to sell JPEGs later on.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/description

[Backer42]

Well they asked for $2M and got $6M. The tiers went up to $10K (1 backer). This whole bs started when they began to sell JPEGs later on.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/description

The KS asked for a whopping $500k (lol) and got $2M from 30k backers. These are the only externally verified numbers which ever existed.

Everything else was just made up by Chris Roberts. "Look, I have this pledge counter on my own web page" - Sure, Chris. I don't believe a single thing of it until I get to see audited financials.

In fact, using the $2M KS as a base line and Crobert's made up six million dollars, I can calculate a bullshit factor of 6 / 2 = 3.

That means when we look at $190M of bullshit, I deduce a 190 / 3 = $63M of real money from 600k accounts wasted in six years by 325 / 3 = 108 employees. Assuming that the bullshit factor of 3 remained constant, which is pretty unlikely. It might have increased at an exponential rate.

 

[Caveat Emptor]

Chris promised that all the money would go towards development. This can be technically true, as all staff costs are considered  part of development.

The key is knowing how much the top staff (Chris, Sandi, Ortwin, Erin et al.) are being paid (effectively paying themselves). Is this commensurate with industry norms, taking into account revelant experience and expertise?

Only by seeing the financials and untangling the web of associated companies will we (and the backers) ever know.

CIG/RSI seem particularly keen to not release this information, which is why the CryTek lawsuit is of interest.

[Penny579]

Oh all the money went towards game development,  see we are 'not for profit'.  you only make a profit when your revenue exceeds your costs.

Now you might be critical of our BDSE ever, but I think you will struggle to fault our best dam cost accounting ever, whenever there is a risk of profit somehow we always manage to find a bit more cost.

Any money we raised over 30 million per year we had to pay the chairman as a bonus for raising 30 million, I mean if we did not reward him well we would not have brought in 30 million a year for 'us' in the first place. we need this kind of bonus structure in place as it encourages performance, the bonus is just another part of "fair" wages.

Then we had to get the chairman to negotiate with himself to buy his own IP, obviously another very real cost. and let me tell you "Brilliant" IP does not come cheap.

Then there is the high flying executive team, chairman's wife, brother, and lifelong partner in crime lawyer. Don't worry the chairman was well practised in hard-line negotiations after negotiating with himself in buying IP, definitely getting a deal there.  I think he managed to even keep executive salaries under half a million pounds each with only 8 week holidays a year, and expenses.

The chairman also managed to "fast track" development by buying an existing studio his brother had for a meagre sum of half a million pounds, another very real cost.  No that is not suspicious at all, his brother really did just quit his job, built the studio with his own money and hoped chairman might come to him for help with this ambitious project.

We also cannot forget Mocap Studio we just had to build "for the game" but don't worry the chairman had one of his other shell companies buy it afterwards for a very reasonable price.  The chairman also said he would give us mates rates if we need more mocap in the future, what generous man. He defiantly won't be using that to try sneak back into Hollywood given how successful this project will be.

With all these legitimate costs its miracle we have enough money left over to even pay for developers to even come up with a tech demo more than 8-bit graphics, let alone make a profit.

Edits: to my terrible English